General Election 2015

Dear Candidates: You Will Be Vetted

Joel Connelly at seattlepi.com tells of the state Republican
Party’s move to do
background checks on candidates for statewide or congressional
office.

I don’t think it harms my Olympian objectivity to say, “Good
move.”

The party has the luxury of hiring someone to do the job for
them. It takes much more time than you might realize to do the
necessary search on everyone. We have to do these checks on our
own. Sadly, my years here at the Kitsap Sun make it clear that it’s
a necessary activity.

I’ll leave names out, for now, but past background checks have
revealed someone writing bad checks and another candidate whose
resume and court testimony appeared to be a complete fabrication.
In the latter case it was a writer for a now defunct blog site that
made the first discovery. In most cases, we don’t find anything of
note, which is the good news. The year the bad check writer ran,
online state records showed the opponent might have filed
bankruptcy. I drove to Seattle to see the actual filing and
verified it was someone with the same name as the candidate.